Tom Chapman
Epic Games is bringing Fortnite into a whole new era, and not just because of Chapter 6 Season 1. Alongside the traditional Battle Royale mode and other innovations like Fortnite Reload, there’s the introduction of Fortnite OG, the GTA-inspired Brick Life Mode, and more.
Although the surprise was spoiled ahead of time, Fortnite has also introduced text chat. This means more than just talking to those in your team about whether to land at Flooded Frogs or Seaport City, as you can chat with the entire lobby. Well, as long as it’s not full of bots.
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Fortnite players worried about ‘toxic’ text chat
Anyone who played Call of Duty back in the day will know it had a toxic lobby problem, leading to current fears that the usually family-friendly Fortnite could go down the same route. When ShiinaBR shared news of text chat, popular content creator D3NNI wrote: “Oh my god this is about to be so toxic.”
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oh my god this is about to be so toxic 😭😭😭😭
— D3NNI (@D3NNI_yt) December 9, 2024
These concerns were shared by others, and another player added, “They’re adding a whole game text chat?? I have a feeling I know what it’s gonna be like.. the fn community is too toxic.” A third concluded, “This is either gonna be really funny or really bad, worse case scenario it’ll just be like toxic OW text chat.”
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Alongside hopes that there will be an option to turn off Fortnite text chat, others simply vowed not to use it for fear of getting banned.
The official announcement from Epic Games stated that toxic messages will automatically be screened, while messages involving personal information will also be blocked from appearing.
This should hopefully tackle potential credit card issues, although we’ve seen savvy players get around similar parameters before. Anyone over the age of 13 can choose to remove censors on ‘mature language and toxicity’, also suggesting that Epic knows there could be toxicity issues.
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When it comes to the overhauled Fortnite text chat, a party channel lets you talk to your teammates, while a game channel sounds like chaos for public conversations. In terms of direct messages, this is limited to only those on your friend list.
Like the voice chat reporting system, you can supposedly take on toxic players yourself. Still, there are worries that it’ll be abused. Call of Duty had to employ AI to stomp out waves of toxicity when Warzone introduced proximity chat.
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While Fortnite’s developers seem confident its text chat will foster a friendly environment for all, it’s hard to say just how swift moderation will be.
